Chapter Twenty-Two

My knees quivered and collapsed. I fell backward against the wall and slid to the floor, my head pounding with pain. My ears were beyond pain, moving into a frightening numbness. I sat there, my ass flat on the floor, my legs splayed out, lacking the strength or the will to move. Pamela looked at me, her face a cold, calculating mask. She came close and with a harsh tone cut through my emotional fog.

“We have to get rid of him.”

My mind refused all functions and everything felt unreal, like a poorly remembered plot.

“Jason!” She slapped my face. “We have to dispose of Eddie.”

I looked at her, the stinging of my cheek an utterly inconsequential sensation.

“We did,” I muttered. “We took care of him.”

“He’s dead but we can’t have that corpse here!”

“Oh.” I’m not sure if I agreed or if I simply wanted her to leave me alone.

“I’ve got the enzymes,” she said, her voice taking on husky pleading tones. “But I can’t get him into the shower. You have to help me, Jason. Sweetie, I can’t do this alone.”

Yeah, wash it all down the drain. That sounded good, and somehow familiar. She took my hands and pulled me to my feet.

With plenty of pushing and pulling we dragged Eddie’s corpse along the floor, leaving a wide wet slick of blood. The shower had a lip and pulling him up high enough to roll him into the tublike bottom proved difficult. Eventually he tumbled into the stall and Pamela stripped his clothes. As she wrenched the fabric free from his corpse she shoved them in my hands.

“Recycler,” she ordered, pushing the last bit of torn bloody cloth into my bloody hands.

* * *

I held the clothes, blood staining my fingers and falling to the floor in large red drops. The smell invaded my nose, and my stomach revolted. I left the shower and hurried to the recycler, shoving the cloth into it. I started the cycle, and then rushed to the bathroom, happy the architect had separated bowel movements from showering. I needed privacy and time to deal with being a murderer. With scalding-hot water and vast amounts of soap I washed Eddie’s blood off my hands. Under the scalding stream my skin burned and the pain pierced my befuddled mind, grounding me in the here and now.

I walked slowly back to the shower stall. Pamela was gone but Eddie lay in the tub like discarded garbage, naked and violated by our bullets. He was contorted in a posture only the dead assume. Blood flowed down the drain, vanishing into Nocturnia’s waste and reclamation systems.

“It’s almost all over.”

I leapt at her voice as she stepped around me. She carried a large sealed jug, easily two gallons or more. She smiled. I think it was meant to comfort me, but the expression, coming so close after so much horror, intensified my unease.

“This is pretty stinky,” she said, holding up the jug.

I nodded, but stayed.

She shrugged and broke the disposable container’s cap. A sharp pungent odor exploded into the confined area. My eyes watered and I fought back a coughing spasm. Pamela held the jug out and let the thick oily fluid gurgle into the stall.

It touched the body and instantly flesh bubbled and fumed, making the stench stronger and viler. Through blurry, watery vision, I watched Eddie’s corpse settle and begin to collapse as the flesh liquefied. Pamela moved the spout around, covering him with the stuff. Thick fumes shrouded him in a heavy fog and a soft but persistent hissing filled the room.

Coughing and gagging, she turned and shoved the empty jug into my hands.

“Recycler.”

I nodded and hurriedly disposed of the jug. After I pressed the start button I wondered about the colonial logs. No doubt this stuff, the bloody rags, and whatever was sluicing down the drains would attract Security’s attention. We needed to get Forge hooked back up again, and fast.

I passed Pamela washing her hands and face and went to the front room. Navigating the overturned furniture, I reclaimed Forge and, from force of habit, took it across the landing to my office. After setting it down on my desk, I reconnected power and data.

“Forge, are you operational?”

“All authorized operations are available.”

“Good. Access waste and reclamation management and alter all logs for this location to erase any evidence or indication of violent crime or unusual disposal.”

“Specified application already programmed and initiated.”

The display indicated the processes started.

“Forge, you fabricated the stuff Pamela used to dissolve Eddie’s body?”

“I produced the enzymatic reagent.”

“We need more, enough for two more bodies.”

My stomach flipped as I visualized stripping Terrance and Nataya naked, turning them into an ugly red sludge and then washing them down the drain like diarrhea. Forge had given me the production time, but I had missed it.

“Repeat.”

“That quantity will require 19,386 seconds for production.”

Damn, more than five hours!

“We’re not done,” Pamela called out from the office door. “Just a little bit more, my love.”

I followed her down to the lobby and the bodies that waited there.

“I don’t suppose there’s a shower down here?”

“No, but there’s a restroom, of course.”

She looked at Terrance and Nataya and then shook her head.

“That won’t do. The drains will be too small.” She gave me an unpleasant look. “We’d have to cut them up and do it in pieces.”

I raised my hands, warding off the image. “I can’t do that.”

“I know,” she agreed. “So we have to get them upstairs.” Looking at the bodies, she asked, “The bigger or the easier one first?”

I hated the idea of stripping brave Nataya, to humiliate her in death, and wanted to put that off for as long as possible.

“Terrance.”

I slipped my arms under his armpits and wrestled with the corpse while Pamela took the feet. In starts and stops, leaving a bloody stain on the floor and steps, we managed to get him to the shower stall. Before we put him in, we stripped off his clothes. Since he was lighter than Eddie, it was easier getting him over the lip and into the stall. There hardly seemed any rush. We still had to wait hours before Forge produced enough of the reagent to dissolve what was left of Terrance and Nataya.

“Come on,” she said, leaving the room. “There’s still one more.”

I trailed Pamela slowly as I slotted puzzle pieces in place.

Forge couldn’t do anything with the colonial network quickly. That fact bubbled to the top of my mind amid a terrifying series of speculations.

When Pamela had vanished, all her records did as well. She had said it was because she had spotted Eddie but Forge couldn’t have erased her records that fast, not without leaving a trail that even thumb-fingered Security could follow.

She had the records ready to be erased and set up ahead of time, waiting for her to give the order to Forge. Without telling me a word, leaving me lost as Security closed in, following those faked transactions.

That prompted even less welcome thoughts.

Eddie hadn’t created those records to frame me; that sadist preferred physical, hands-on revenge. He had been adamant about getting Forge. There was no backup. He hadn’t created those records, and neither had Hardgrave.

We reached the lobby and crossed to Nataya’s body. Her face was still contorted in anger and contempt from her desperate, futile charge. The bullet hole from Eddie’s perfect aim was centered in her high wide forehead but the back of her head gaped with a massive hole. Again Pamela took the legs while I gripped the body under the arms. We went to the stairs and I walked backward up them.

Pamela had known nothing about Hardgrave; I was certain about that. After Dr. Hardgrave had patched up Eddie he must have realized that Forge had been stolen and saw an opportunity to get it back. The Tans then spotted Pamela’s forged records and came straight at me, thinking I was Eddie’s business partner.

“Hurry up,” she complained. “This bitch is heavier than she looks.”

“Sorry, I’m unsteady. My head’s still really hurting from Eddie.”

“I’m sorry, my love. I didn’t mean to snap.”

I watched movies for a living and yet it was only at that moment I realized I was looking right at a superb actress. Faking fatigue – it didn’t take much – I stumbled, slowing our ascent.

She had produced enough reagent to destroy a body and when Terrance and Nataya arrived she had been certain it was Eddie. More wheels turned into place. If Eddie was killed and dissolved, even if people knew about him and Forge, no one would ever find him. With a fake destroyed Forge conveniently in my office Security would declare that the threat was over. That would leave Pamela with the real Forge, covering her tracks and vanishing among Nocturnia’s four million people.

It was a perfect escape that worked only as long as I was not in the picture and not spilling what I knew. Either she planned for both of us to scamper into the crowd or just herself. If she planned to kill me why hadn’t she done it already? I looked down into Nataya’s face and realized the Tans had never been any part of her plot. Was I alive only because she needed help getting rid of the bodies? Or maybe this was all too much for me and I was paranoid, seeing threats where there was only love.

We reached the landing and I backed slowly into my apartment, warily watching Pamela. Which was it? How could I know? Once we reached the shower stall I dropped my end, and Nataya’s head hit the tiled floor with a sickening squelch. I hurried out, squeezing past Pamela.

“We’re not done!”

“I know, but I’m going to throw up.”

I hurried to the bathroom. I darted down the hallway, dodged inside and faked retching. As I did so I pulled out my pistol with the small J inscribed on the grip.

His and hers she had said, but in the confusion I had gotten hers and she mine. Now we had our proper guns back. I had the unused gun that no one had fired – the gun that I had accidentally pointed in her direction when she had laid our trap at the door.

I pointed it at the exterior wall, hoping, praying, I was wrong. I squeezed the trigger.

Nothing.

I checked and rechecked, ejecting rounds and trying again with a fresh cartridge.

Nothing.

My gun didn’t work, only hers.

* * *

Abandoning the useless pistol in the bathroom, I walked back to the shower. Pamela squatted, tearing Nataya’s clothes off. The shower poured a heavy rain into the stall, washing away the blood. She turned and looked at me with undisguised annoyance.

“Help me get her into the stall.”

“I don’t understand.” My voice was weak and cracked.

“We have to wash the bodies away.”

“That’s not what I mean.” I watched her hands, paying particular attention to the pocket hanging heavy with a pistol. “Was everything an act?”

She turned toward me, still holding on to Nataya’s corpse.

“What are you talking about?”

“Am I just a fall guy?”

Her expression turned cruel and cold.

“You needed someone to take the blame.”

“No.” But now her act didn’t play as well.

“You always intended to murder him. He didn’t do a damned thing the night we stole Forge and tonight you knew he was coming.”

“No honey, it’s not like that at all—”

“It isn’t? You just happen to have a couple of gallons of corpse-be-gone ready when Eddie surprised us?”

She hesitated and I barreled on, tears in my eyes and my throat tight.

“But you thought he was at the door when it was Terrance and Nataya. Why? Is it because you left clues, leading him to a trap?”

“Baby, you’re upset. I am too. This isn’t what it looks like. In the morning—”

“Did Forge lead you to me? Did it tell you what to wear? What to say? Did it teach you how to manipulate me or is that really you?”

“I told you Forge led me here, to you, my love—”

“Don’t say it.”

“What do you want?”

I shrugged. “The truth, but you’ve never given me that. You’re one of Eddie’s prostitutes, and all this is your escape.” I let the accusation hang in the air without a questioning tone.

She dropped Nataya’s half-nude body. It fell across the lip of the shower stall, the head hitting the side with another nasty squelch. Pamela turned, squaring off with me. Her posture changed, becoming defiant and angry.

“I was a prostitute. As you can see I’ve quit.”

She tried to smile, but the facade failed to convince.

“I wanted someone who loved me, not someone just using my body.”

As she spoke, her eyes, those lovely dark blue, nearly violet eyes, held no compassion, no warmth, no love, and she reached into her pocket. I didn’t give her the chance to pull out the pistol, charging directly into her.

We tumbled over Nataya’s corpse and fell into the stall. Pamela’s head slammed against the wall, but it did not lessen her ferocity. She drove a knee into my stomach, striking hard but with only a glancing blow. As we fell my hand slid along the slick wet wall, across the controls, shutting the drain.

She slipped the gun out of her pocket.

Lying atop Terrance’s bloody body, my nose and throat burning from the noxious fumes, but at least the shower had washed away enough of the reagent that my skin didn’t start melting. I grabbed her wrist and we struggled for control of the pistol. Her free hand raked my face. I screamed and blood spilled. I held her wrist with both hands. I twisted it hard, but the water made my grip slip and she held on to the gun.

We rolled and scrambled for leverage in the stall. Water poured across us and my knees and legs slipped across the slick and bloody bottom. Again, she clawed at my face. With one hand I grabbed her other wrist and fell onto her, chest-to-chest, face-to-face. All illusions of love vanished. Adrenaline poured into my bloodstream as the realization that this was a fight to the death penetrated my mind. My heart raced, pounding so fiercely it hurt.

Pamela head-butted me hard, the blow knocking me dizzy. I barely kept my grip on her wrists as the world spun around me. She snapped at me with her teeth, biting at my nose and tearing flesh. Pain flashed through my face.

I tried driving her head back into the floor, but Terrance’s body kept her high enough to foil my attempts and all I managed was freeing my torn nose from her teeth. We slipped sideways and the showerhead rained water down on us.

Her wet wrist slipped out of my hand and she snapped the gun to my face. I batted at her arm just as she fired a deafening gunshot. Flame burned the side of my head and I screamed. Disoriented, I recoiled, and she freed both of her hands. I opened my eyes as the barrel pointed to my face. The pistol clicked.

Empty.

Terror powered my reflexes and I slammed my fist into her face. We slipped off Terrance’s corpse and into the growing pool of water. With a knee she slammed me in the testicles, but fear and anger propelled me past the pain. I hit her again and this blow was more solid. Blood exploded from her nose. My knuckles cracked and my fingers screamed with agony.

We thrashed in the water, wounded, afraid, and angry. Getting both hands on my throat, she tried to throttle me but I slammed my arms into the insides of her elbows to break her grip. She kicked, getting a moment’s purchase from the corpse, and slid up the tub until her head hit the wall.

I put my weight on her, my knees compressing her chest, pinning her to the stall’s floor. She flailed, but her arms were at the wrong angles and I avoided her grasp. With both hands, one already swelling and afire with pain, I grabbed her by the hair, her long beautiful hair, and drove her head backward into the floor.

The water rushed in, submerging her. I cried out in pain, emotional and physical, as I held her there. She thrashed, her nails clawing at my arms, tearing the coveralls and my skin underneath. My weight crushed her chest, pinning her under the surface. Her hair turned slick and I twisted it into thick cords in my hands, wrapping the strands around my wrists like a rope, never letting up, never stopping.

She fought desperately as her breath ran out. Tears blurred my vision, turning her face into an indistinct smudge. Her muscles trembled and convulsed and I ignored the blood dripping from my face and running down my arms. I blinked away my tears and through the water for a moment, for the last moment, our eyes locked.

She cycled through the same emotions as Eddie had: fear, shock, pleading, but I held tight, keeping her face submerged. She thrashed but escaping bubbles obscured her face. With great spasms from her hips and spine she tried to throw me off. Suddenly her violence stopped. She shuddered and was still. Her eyes, wide and alive with terror, became unfocused and died.

Sobbing so hard my chest hurt and my throat burned, I pressed down, pushing my weight through my shoulders. When the pain in my fingers became unbearable I fell backward, landing heavily against Terrance. I didn’t care, and with the water spraying across my face I doubted I would ever care.

She remained still under the water. She was not playing possum. Pamela was dead. I cried for a long time, long enough for the water to reach the lip and spill out onto the floor, running red with blood.